If I’d answered yes, why you did immediately ask if I’d want to have sex with you? Do you know the difference between consent and coercion? Between man and boy? I want to write a poem in the form of the rice purity test, but do you think it’ll look bad? Do you know that you’re the reason I tell people I have two different rice purity scores? How large is the numerical gap between consensual and nonconsensual acts you’ve done, or rather, have been done to you? Do you want to know how large mine is? Do you care? How did I read Lolita with a straight face? Am I asexual, or is there something there? Do you feel it? Do you only like me because I’m Asian? Did you expect me to moan in Japanese? Did you know I can’t even speak it? Did you know you are the reason I am questioning? Do I like you, or do I just like male attention? Did I steal an ill-fitting label because I'm tired of being sexualized? Is it not impossible for aces to be sexualized, too? 

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Do you think I should’ve read between the lines more when my friend asked about my thoughts on Call Me By Your Name? Did you know that friend is the reason I’m questioning, the reason I’ve unraveled myself? Did you know she told me she liked women before I could conceptualize liking women? Are women an option? Do I like women? Is it possible for me to feel something in the absence of a man? Do you understand how beautiful she is? Did you know she’s the holiest thing I’ve ever seen? Am I objectifying her too much in calling her holy? Did you know she started dating a pretentious asshole with a perfect SAT score? Did you know I still hope she’s happy? Do you think that if I told her I liked her, she’d like me? Why is Troye Sivan so good? Why is girl in red so bad? Do you think Timothee Chalamet ruined the conversation? Did you overhear him in English class, that suck-up cheater ass as he explained to Mrs. Dagen the sacrilege of sex with a peach? God, don’t you hate how he hadn’t even read the book? Like what authority does he have to speak? Why is his voice so much louder than mine? Can you explain to me how Elio’s being gay is related to the peach? Don’t you think straight dudes would fuck a peach, too, if given the chance? If I scream, would you hear me? Is that all we are, just perversions of sex and ripe fruit? Don’t you remember more to the story than just Elio and a peach? How could you ever see me as something else than a sex-crazed animal? Would you believe that I’m a virgin? Can a lesbian be a virgin if all she is is a sex-crazed animal? Did you know that peach is the reason I’m questioning this culture? Was the peach ever that important? What is queerness defined beyond sex? Please, could you explain sodomy laws to me? No, actually, could you tell me what wrong I’m doing—but could you refrain from using the words biblical or sin or Godly? Did you know I don’t particularly care for heaven or hell, either? Don’t you think that straight people do weird shit too? Don’t you think that tattling on your neighbor’s sex life is a little, I don’t know, gay?

 

Will The Song of Achilles be my Call Me By Your Name? Will the next generation know of age appropriate love games? And how could you see this as anything but natural, the way Patroclus loves his Achilles? Why is this healthier than most straight love stories I read? Why is this healthier than my straight love story? Why is this wrong? 

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If I am gay, why am I wrong? 

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Can you truly change sides of morality like flipping over a coin to be heads up? If so, what side are you on? Do we choose sides or choose belief? Why did I cry so much when I came out to my mom? Why did she force it out of me? Why can’t I be in control of my sexuality—not who I love, but what I do? Why must I publish my coming out story under my pen name? 

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Do you think I should come out to my dad? 

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Why did my uncle call us special snowflakes begging for attention? Why did my dad laugh along with him? Should I go to a pride parade? Should I hang a lesbian flag in my room? Should I wear a friendship bracelet of cascading sunsets: pink and orange and white? Should I put a rainbow sticker on my laptop or in my instagram bio? Does that make me special, or any more queer? Should I have to brand myself to prove myself? Do I have something to prove to myself? If a queer person does not look queer, are they any less queer? If a closeted queer dies, were they even queer at all? What does queer look like, anyway? Why does my dad have conspiracies about the unmarried women in my family being secretly gay? Should I be one of those unmarried women? 

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Did you know my dad is the reason I am questioning—everything?